San Joaquin County Biographies
This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm
HENRY MOHR.
The good old days of the pioneer are recalled by the life story of Henry
Mohr, the early settler long honored throughout San Joaquin County, and
especially so as the founder of Mohr's Landing, known now as Bethany, on the San
Joaquin River. For over a half century he had resided in California and San
Joaquin County. He was born in Holstein, Germany, on March 12, 1829 and was
bereft of his parents when only nine years of age. A neighboring family cared
for him for the next six years, when he went to sea on a German merchant ship
and several years were occupied on voyages to the Dutch East Indies, West Indies
and other islands and countries of the world, sailing a number of times around
the Horn and the Cape of Good Hope. Sailing through the Golden Gate in 1851, he
determined to give up a seaman's life and locating at Hayward, Alameda County,
he made that his home for several years, when he removed to San Joaquin County
and secured lands near the river and established the only means of
transportation to and from San Francisco there. He established his first home on
Union Isle and engaged in raising grain and stock until the winter of 1861-62,
the year of the disastrous flood that inundated the island and caused great
financial loss to the farmers. With the brave spirit and strong will which
characterized his whole life, Mr. Mohr set about to retrieve his lost
possessions; engaging in the lumber and ferry-boat business on the river, he
soon had made up all he lost. In 1868 he acquired the farm near Bethany which
has been the home place ever since, and which responded to his excellent farming
methods with bounteous crops each season.
In 1873 occurred the marriage of Mr. Mohr to Miss Dorothea Lindemann, a
native also of Holstein, Germany, born September 29, 1848, who came to
California via the Isthmus of Panama, in company with three girl friends,
arriving in San Francisco in 1869, and going to Livermore, Alameda County, where
a sister, Mrs. Emma Rose, resided. Of the five children born to Mr. and Mrs.
Mohr only one survives, Mary, the wife of William C. Brown, a native of San
Joaquin County, a son of Mr. and Mrs. J. C. Brown, prominently and favorably
known ranchers of the upper division of Roberts Island; the other children,
Henry, Dora, William and George, are deceased. Mohr's Landing was, until the
coming of the railroad in 1869, a most flourishing business center, as the river
was the chief means of transportation and the farmers availed themselves of it,
and the straight�forward business methods used by Mr. Mohr made him a business
man with few equals. He was a stanch Republican and few men in this portion of
California were more familiarly or favorably known, and when he passed away on
December 16, 1909, the community lost one of its most progressive citizens and a
loyal friend to all who were privileged to know him. Mrs. Mohr still lives on
the old home place, now conducted by her son-in-law, W. C. Brown.
History of San Joaquin County, California � Los Angeles, Historic Record Co.,
1923
p 963
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler.